


The Sins of the Father

by daylighthour



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: 1x13, Angst, Dying Arthur, Episode: s01e13 Le Morte D'Arthur, Family, Family Issues, Gen, Guilt, Hurt, King - Freeform, Not much Comfort though, Questing Beast, Sick Arthur, and now he feels terrible, but he realizes that, coda to 1x13, father - Freeform, gaius - Freeform, merlin and arthur - Freeform, sick, sorry - Freeform, uther is a bad father
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 05:40:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16655275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daylighthour/pseuds/daylighthour
Summary: Episode S01 E13 from Uther's point of view. It's every father's horror to see their child lying almost dead upon some cold, cruel table. It's even more horrifying when the you're the reason your child is lying there.





	The Sins of the Father

**Author's Note:**

> I've seen a lot of works portraying Uther as a bad man, and while I do believe he is morally ambivalent at best, I want to challenge this portrayal. Seeing him gently soothing Arthur during the episode was a rare moment of tenderness from him, and that made me believe he can't be all bad. I wanted to explore that moment here.

Uther is busy, buried deep beneath layers and layers of stately speeches and propositions and grain ledgers, when there is a violent knock at the door. He jumps a bit, but regains himself before he spills ink all over the parchment he is writing on. With an irritated growl at the back of his throat he continues scribbling, intent upon finishing this word before he gives his visitor entrance, but to his surprise, the door flies open without his order, bouncing off its hinges.

  
“Sire!” A guard calls from the doorway, red-faced and breathless.

  
“What is the meaning of this interruption?” Uther demands, feeling the inkpot tremble beneath his fingers.

  
“It’s the prince, sire!” The guard gasps like a fish out of water, his hands shake. “He is gravely hurt. Gaius requests your presence immediately.”

  
A cold weight sinks down in the pit of Uther’s stomach, and with it he feels all of his anger seep down into the floor and away. For a moment he just sits, the words he has just heard tumbling about in his ears. _Prince_ , who is that? _Hurt_ , what does that mean? Until the words all roll together and it suddenly clicks.

  
The prince, his son, is hurt.

  
Uther flies from his seat and crosses his chambers to the door in long, sweeping strides. “Where is he? Take me to him! What has happened?”

  
“Th-this way sire,” the guard says, although he is now the one jogging behind the king. “In Gaius’ chambers.”

  
“What’s _happened_ to him, I said. Damn you!” At the back of his mind he knows, can feel for certain in the gnawing pit of his stomach what it is that’s come to pass, but he asks out of a small hope that the guard will say Arthur fell of his horse, that he broke his ankle, that he took a sword to the arm.

  
But the guard speaks his fears, cements them aloud. “The beast, Your Majesty. He’s been bitten.”

  
Uther flings open the door to the physician’s chambers as though it were a tree branch in his way.   
“Where is he?” he cries. “Where’s my son?” The words feel hot, desperate on his tongue, and he tries not to think of all the times that he has merely called him ‘the prince’.

  
There, spread across the physician’s table, is Arthur. Uther goes to him and makes to stroke matted, sweat-soaked hair from Arthur’s forehead, but he shies away at the last second, afraid that if he touches Arthur’s skin he will find the scorching heat of deadly fever or the cold clamminess of death. The king isn’t sure which would terrify him more. Already Arthur’s face is pale beneath the dirt and blood smudged across it. All along his shoulder is a giant rip in his mail, every inch of it soaked in crimson.

  
Uther cradles Arthur’s head, stares at the the eyelids which do not so much as flutter. “Do something, Gaius,” he says, and he would rescind every order that he has ever given just so this one will be followed.

  
“I’ll do everything I can, my lord,” the old man says, and Uther would have his head, would strangle him with his bare hands right now if they were not already holding his son. He will not let Arthur down again.

  
“I will bear him to his chambers.” Uther places Arthur’s arm around his own neck and lifts him from the table, biting back tears at the limp, lifeless form, the way Arthur cannot even grab at him for support. He hears Gaius make a sound as if trying to speak, but he will not listen, will not leave his son prostrate on a hard slab of wood in a physician’s sickroom of potions and brews.

  
As Uther carries his son out, across the courtyard toward the royal quarters of the castle, his knees twinge at the weight in his arms, and he realizes that he has not held Arthur since the night the boy was born, his last night with Igraine. Arthur had been small enough then to fit in one arm, tucked to Uther’s chest. The thought suddenly repulses him, that in all those years he had not held his son _once_ , that up until now he had forgotten the feel of his own flesh and blood in his arms. He had held Arthur once, the day he had come into the world, and he held Arthur now, the day he might leave it.

  
All at once the thought is too much for him, and Uther’s knees buckle beneath him at last. Immediately four guards rush to him, lifting Arthur from his arms as sobs rip their way from Uther’s chest. They carry Arthur away from him, to the entrance and his chambers, but away. All the better, perhaps, Uther thinks, because what authority did he have now to carry his son after condemning him to his own death?

  
***************

  
Uther has spent the day at court, revising treatises, taking dinner. When at last it is night and he can avoid his conscience no longer, he goes to see Arthur. There is a chair by the bed, but he bypasses it, sitting instead on the bed by Arthur’s hip. The bed sinks under his weight, but Arthur doesn’t move, doesn’t give a cue that he feels his father beside him.

  
Arthur has been two days like this already, pale-faced and shadow-eyed. Three times a day Gaius tips water and some sort of tincture to his lips and rubs his throat to force him to swallow, but still Arthur’s fever rages. Gaius says that he doesn’t have much time left, four days, perhaps five at most. Uther wonders if perhaps when it draws nearer to the end he will be able sit beside his son and not feel the niggling sense of not belonging, of wishing to run away, but he is not so sure. He thinks he’ll still wish to escape, to run away from kinghood and the monster it has made him become, a man who would send the only thing he loved to the slaughtering block.

  
No one else is in Arthur’s chambers but him. Gaius has gone to snag what precious little sleep he can in between his nearly day-long vigil, and Guinevere has retreated from tending Arthur to waiting outside the door for Uther to finish. Neither is the serving boy, Merlin, there, and he is most conspicuous by his absence. The room feels emptiest without him there beside Arthur, for as unbecoming as their relationship is, Merlin shows Arthur love. That is more than Uther can say for himself.

  
Arthur groans suddenly, snapping Uther from his thoughts. He writhes, gritting his teeth and panting, moaning at the pain or perhaps whatever fevered horror he finds in his delirium. Uther reaches forward, strokes his fingers gently along the side of Arthur’s sweat-shined cheek.

  
“Sleep, Arthur,” he whispers, and it feels like a miracle and a curse all at once when Arthur falls still once more.

  
Arthur’s bandages are soaked through, and there is blood on the bed sheets as well. Uther turns away, unable to bear the sight any longer.

  
_My son, how could I have done this to you?_

For it was surely he who did it. Did Gaius not tell him that the Questing Beast was a magical one, a dangerous one, that one bite from it meant certain death? Yes, he had, but Uther had been confident, cocky, monstrous as always. Arthur will never let that happen to him, he’d thought. Arthur will go and slay the beast, because nothing will ever be any match for the prince! God, he had seen the fear in Arthur’s eyes, had looked him straight in the face and still ordered him to go! He had ordered his son, his only son, his only link left to all he had once loved in the world, on a suicide mission!

  
_Arthur, what have I done? How could I have gotten things so muddled, so wrong?_

The answer, Uther knew, was many, many years in the making.


End file.
